Tim Hughes puts the boot into the highs and lows of the online travel business (with an Australasian/Asian bias) with some blogging about consuming and loving travel thrown in.

Friday, September 29, 2006

Wotif white label live on Ninemsn

First affiliate white label deal for Wotif has just gone live on the ninemsn travel channel (Australian joint venture version of Microsoft's msn and the largest portal). They announced it a few months ago and how it is up and running. Ninemsn has traditionally avoided all attempts to do revenue share deals, traditionally asking for large up-front financial commitments. If this is the case here then this is likely to be the largest single marketing spend by Wotif. If there is a revenue share component it will be the first time that I know of that Wotif has had to build a commission tracking and sharing component to their engine. With a margin of only 10% there is not a lot of money to go around to affiliates compared to the larger margin programs run by Expedia and Octopustravel however RatesToGo has shown that you can still build a strong affiliate program off low margins if the content is good. Either way it is a new marketing approach and channel for Wotif.

I like the integration on the ninemsn travel page, however if I was Wotif I would be unhappy with the widget/engine being below the fold as it lessens the brand impact and if I was ninemsn I would want Wotif to work on a next generation co-branded landing page on the Wotif site to strengthen the ties back to the ninemsn travel channel.

Well, to be fair , mr. insider, and I'm speaking as someone who was an insider - you don't get to where mr. W#$# is in 5 years by spending money willy-nilly or on crap deals. I'd put that down to being smart and business savvy.

If that means being cheap in your book, then I'm fairly sure he'd be ok with your opinion.

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